Joseph Wherry was a well-known automotive journalist and author in the 1950s and 1960s. He published, among other things, The Jaguar Story (1966). I recently acquired some of the negatives that Wherry had related to his Jaguar writings, and added scans of those negatives to my website:
The Chocolate Sundae XK120 (pics taken in late 1952)
An XK120 FHC with Robergel bolt on wire wheels (pics taken in late 1952)
A brand new XK140MC DHC (1955)
The Chocolate Sundae story is fascinating, especially since an auction house sold an XK120 claiming to be the Chocolate Sundae car in 2013. As was pointed out here on the forum a few years ago, the auction house XK120 looks like it was built well after the real Chocolate Sundae car. I have more about this on my website.
I hope to reunite Wherry’s negatives with the cars. Please let me know if you know where any of these XKs are.
My favorite Wherry pic - a shot of the Chocolate Sundae’s open Trunk. The owner of the car, the owner of the only Jag dealer in the midwest in the early 1950s, apparently used the XK to bird hunt.
A huge thanks for sharing your website. I recognized every photo that was in The Jaguar Story. That was the book, newly published at the time, that launched me on a lifelong love of Jaguars. The old issues you have reprinted of the early JCNA also are great. The road test reprint from Auto Age was pure pleasure to read. I would love to scan those medium format negatives from Joseph Wherry and really “look” at the images more closely. Do you have the negatives of the SS cars that appeared in The Jaguar Story? Thanks again, Gary
Thanks for the kind words. I unfortunately don’t have the SS negatives. I suspect those were sold off before I stumbled on the Wherry personal files liquidation sale.
What pics are you interested in? No need to rescan anything - I scanned the Wherry negatives in tiff, with each scan about 5k x 5k in size (50mb+). Let me know what you need via a message and we can figure something out.
I just added Wherry’s test drive write-up on the brand new XK140-MC DHC to the website. I somehow overlooked that while I was putting together the website.
Great stuff there, thanks for sharing.
Wherry’s “Jaguar Story” was one of my first two Jaguar books I bought in about 1969 or 70, along with Lord Montagu’s “Jaguar”.
Chocolate Sundae has a rare feature, a seat cushion upholstery method different to most 120s. Early type jack. Rear bumpers on upside down. White paint under the bonnet and in front of the radiator looks to be a repaint job, not original.
The Morris Minor in the FHC shots brings back fond memories of my first car, and my dad saying “If you can get that piece of junk to run you can have it.” I did.
Check out the C-Type with drum brakes.
Thanks Rob for pointing out the teardrop seat construction and the other details I missed. I would really like to reunite these great pics with the Chocolate Sundae car. The Sundae car has enough unique features (early xk120, seat cushions, no heater, holes in the hood for the ornament, cool hardtop, etc) that identifying the car should be very doable if it still exists.
My imagine first car, a 67 Mustang, was a bit easier to work on than your Morris Minor. You probably have better stories though.
Thanks for all your efforts showing this important information on your website. Would love to use some of the Chocolate Sundae pics for my (still to be published) article on Hardtops for XKs. This Glasspar hardtop is well documented but high quality photos are hard to find. Even the ones you show on your website have already a far better quality than the rest (see example below). Question referring to copyright: can we use your photos? No problem in mentioning your name or website.
Sure, you can use my Chocolate Sundae pics. I would appreciate a mention and reference to my website, however. I don’t advertise, so it’s not a money thing. But I do enjoy having people visit my websites, and the websites occasionally generate a very interesting email exchange.
I scanned the negs in at 5k x 5k TIFF format (50mb), so each file is pretty large, but I can manipulate all the photos very quickly via Adobe Lightroom. Please message me once you determine the photos you are interested in, so we can work out the details.
My first Jaguar book, too - bought for NZ$6 in about 1970/71 when I was a student at Auckland Uni, NZ (still have it on my bookshelf!) I treasured it, and know every photo so well, so this really brought back memories. I was also very familiar with the Lord Montagu book, having had it out on virtually permanent loan from my school library for the last three years of the '60s!
I noticed the large clips for the early-type Plastigun grease gun in the engine compartment, so according to Viart, this places the date of the car to sometime before Nov 1951.
My 1950 XK120 has that design of seat with the extra side fillets to the front bolster - I rather like it. Thanks again for posting, Russ (already thanked you on the Facebook group).
According to Roger Payne (THE SU authority, in my book!) the short neck carb suction chambers WITHOUT the angled rib ran to about Dec 1951. My Dec 1950 car is the same. Offhand, I can’t remember when the tall dashpots finished - mid 1950, I seem to recall…
“Chocolate Sundae” also had (as well as the interim short carb chimneys without the air-bleed angled rib) “studless” valve covers. I don’t believe it’s the same car as the Sotheby’s one, at all.
